The Innkeepers (2011)

In 7 words or less: Hotel employees face a very trying shift.

What's it all About? It's the last weekend of the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a lovely New England hotel built in 1891. Closing down, probably due to incompetent staff and lack of towels. Claire and Luke are the only staff for the weekend. There's only two guests. The boss is away so they are going to indulge in some good old fashioned ghost hunting.

Nice establishing shot. Wonky tripod.

Best bits? The film is split into three acts. Each act is introduced with a nice title and the story slowly builds into a tense finalé. What impressed me most was the oddness of the film. An interesting horror movie! Thank goodness. It's roots grounded in proper horror (70's and 80's) this is a very slow burning film, which I can only assume would make a 16 year old cry from boredom, but I loved every lingering minute.

Claire waves her horror-stick.

It's funny! A lot of the film taken up by the two employees just chatting, and wasting time, but it's great. There's an oddness to the script that makes it really engaging. But for maximum oddness, look no further than Sara Paxton's portrail of Claire. It's awesome! She's a demented, brave and humorous lead actor. I haven't seen her in anything else, so I don't know if she meant to play it that way or not? A highlight is her giving Kelly McGillis' character a telling off after she has successfully captured evidence of ghosts on tape.

Bloody hell, not again...

You only really get one big scare per act, so, that's 3 big scares for an hour and a half. Some would say that's not enough, but to them I say, shut it! Trying to fit in too many scares makes it less frightening, I think.

Fat Dead Naked Guests. Typical.

Did it make you think thoughts? Yeah. That I love this style of Horror Film. I'm going to be checking out the rest of Ti West's films now. Maybe he is the saviour of horror? Who knows. This is the kind of horror you accidentally watch when you're 9 and it scars you, like Poltergeist. (although that turned out to be not so scary now). When I was watching it, I was reminded, strangely of Adventureland because of the silly chats and meaningless work, and the hotel setting brings back fond The Shining memories (although they are completely different films).

The strangest performance since Radcliffe's Harry Potter.

Would you watch it again? Yeah, I think it could find it onto my yearly horror rotation. Although, I'm still not sure about the ending, I think it could have gone down differently, maybe.

Rating (out of 100%): 79% Holy Moly. Did I like that more than I should have?